Give Me Your Sheep for My Birthday!

So I had a blast on my big bold beautiful day yesterday, the day of my birth, August 3, 2011. Loads of items and well wishes and Ana may have created a monster with a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, a wine we’ve thought about since its first amusing scene in an episode of Midsomer Murders. Among other bounty, I also received a gorgeous female unicorn that we have named “Leonora” (Ana says ‘an Amy King poem is like looking at a Leonora Carrington painting!’) made by the hands of Janis Mars Wunderlich, who now knows how often I teach the stellar documentary she is featured in, “Who Does She Think She Is?” –much to my delight!

But the icing on the birthday cake was the “surprise party” I found in another envelope. Well, I have given to Heifer International in the past and have been meaning to ask others for awhile. But I neglect, I neglect. For my big day, Ana secretly created a registry page in my name and asked a small handful of friends to chip in. They did! And now three families have, in Ana’s words, “received three (3) wonderful, wooly, milky, meaty sheep!” According to Heifer:

What makes Heifer’s approach different is Passing on the Gift, where a family is required to pass on the offspring of their animals to another family, creating a sustainable circle of hope.

I echo that wish for those familes and extend the same to my friends and anyone who gives two shakes of a sheep’s tail! So this blog post is ultimately a shout out and THANK YOU to the peeps who bought the sheep and to anyone else who would still like to contribute any amount on the occasion of my 40th year, here!

mouths of all the woman who you women
who you all women the mouths of the mouths of the mythos of
of the mouths rejoice. women

upon a relay
& of our own difference a spectacle
trace of…
does not idle down
in horoscope, muscles. bodies out in the music…
kinesthetic, a delirious apparition
does not idle down
(capitalist oh show oh show… my wrath)

bodies can build on suffering
endanger then save language, as you do
& demand love

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Of her most recent book from Litmus Press, I Want to Make You Safe, John Ashbery described Amy King's poems as bringing “abstractions to brilliant, jagged life, emerging into rather than out of the busyness of living.”

King was honored by The Feminist Press as one of the “40 Under 40: The Future of Feminism” awardees, and she received the 2012 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

She serves on the Executive Board for VIDA: Woman in Literary Arts, edits the Poetics List, sponsored by The Electronic Poetry Center (SUNY-Buffalo/University of Pennsylvania), moderates the Women’s Poetry Listserv (WOMPO) and the Goodreads Poetry! Group, and teaches English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.

King also co-edited Poets for Living Waters with Heidi Lynn Staples and currently co-edits the PEN Poetry Series and Esque Magazine with Ana Bozicevic.